Archive for December 16th, 2005

RSS and Keyword Filtering

Friday, December 16th, 2005

One of the key strengths of RSS is its searchability.  Information in RSS format is not just highly portable and consumable, it is also highly filterable.  A filtered RSS feed could take the following forms:

I am not interested in everything that my engineers record about their projects, I only want to see any log entries [...]

Stay Niche-Focused

Friday, December 16th, 2005

Staying tightly focused within  your niche is important.  Making sure your posts, titles, link properties, etc are keyword-rich ensures your site will rank higher in search listings.
From time-to-time you need to assess your success rate.  This tedious job gets easier with Tag Cloud.
Administrators can spot trends and pattern keyword and key-phase usage to capitalize [...]

Engage Your Team

Friday, December 16th, 2005

When you redesign a homepage, you know you will miss some bugs, it’s bound to happen.  However, using internal messaging, you make usability a top concern.
When searching online this morning, I came across this story from thisisbroken.com:
I bring you this website submission form:
http://www.insurancehotline.com/scripts/insquote.pl?instype=rosalind_stoYes, a completely empty form.
The piece du resistance: you can successfully submit this [...]

Monetize Your Blog

Friday, December 16th, 2005

Do you want to make money from your blog or on your blog?  Problogger.net has an interesting discussion going on this topic.
What are your goals?  If your goal is to increase the conversation, online, about your company, then monetizing your blog is unneccessary.
If your goal is to increase traffic to your home page, then again, [...]

Offer Your Feed By Email

Friday, December 16th, 2005

Many of your site’s visitors may not be aware they can receive your site updates by email, with no work on your part.  Until RSS readership is mainstream, capitalize on the fact that most everyone has email and knows how to use it.
Read more about Rmail.  Visit the Rmail site.

New Service ‘Reads Your Feeds’ Verbally

Friday, December 16th, 2005

Feed2Podcast is not getting glowing reviews yet, but hopefully this will soon be a viable option for reading your feeds.  It certainly has potential.
However, do not confuse this with a podcast.  A podcast, professionally done or even amateurly done well, may include:
IntrosWhether done with or without music, an introduction is necessary to brand your podcast.  [...]

Microsoft Adopts Mozilla’s RSS Feed Button

Friday, December 16th, 2005

While Microsoft has debated which RSS icon to use in their upcoming versions of Internet Explorer, Office, and Vista, they’ve gone from designing their own, to now adopting Mozilla’s orange version. 
Knowing that whatever icon Microsoft chooses will end up being the standard, I can only applaud them for taking their largest competitor’s icon and [...]